Clark County’s frontier year in 1776

In the 250 years fol­low­ing the Declaration of Independence, the area now encom­pass­ing Clark County has under­gone enor­mous changes. It is instruc­tive to exam­ine what this area was like in 1776 and to recall some of the events that unfold­ed here that year.

The coun­ty is prin­ci­pal­ly under­lain by lime­stone rock of the Ordovician Period. Due to the lime­stone being sol­u­ble, ear­ly vis­i­tors found a karst envi­ron­ment with numer­ous sink­holes, springs, cav­erns, and sink­ing streams. The karst ter­rain meant that nat­ur­al lakes and ponds were rare.

The great­est change between 1776 and now is the amaz­ing trans­for­ma­tion of the phys­i­cal land­scape. There were no roads or towns — in fact, no human set­tle­ments here at all. 

Some have imag­ined ear­ly Clark County as an unbro­ken for­est. Rather, there were large areas of open for­est — dom­i­nat­ed by sug­ar maple, wal­nut, hick­o­ry, buck­eye, and oak trees — alter­nat­ing with stands of native cane (riv­er cane, Arundinaria gigan­tea) and wood­land pasture. 

Clark County then had immense cane­brakes on ridge tops and riv­er bot­toms. Irvine Road was orig­i­nal­ly called “Canebrake Road,” and pio­neer Nathaniel Gist had a large plan­ta­tion called “Canewood.”

Savannah-like wood­land pas­tures con­sist­ed of wild rye, Buffalo clover, peav­ine, and blue­grass, inter­spersed with a few 200- to 400-year-old trees (blue ash, shell­bark hick­o­ry, bur, chin­quapin, and Shumard oaks.)

The land was well watered with trib­u­taries of the Kentucky and Licking Rivers. Many of the county’s major creeks were named that year: Twomile, Fourmile, Howard’s Upper and Lower, Boone, Jouett, and Stoner. One excep­tion was Lulbegrud Creek, named by Boone dur­ing his long hunt in 1770.

Clark County was then part of Fincastle County, Virginia. Native peo­ples, prin­ci­pal­ly Shawnees and Cherokees, hunt­ed here but had no vil­lages at that time. Later evi­dence showed that Indians had pre­vi­ous­ly occu­pied this coun­ty for thou­sands of years. Their most sig­nif­i­cant set­tle­ment was Indian Old Fields. The phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of their pres­ence are the large bur­ial mounds and sacred cir­cles they left behind.

Hunters found an abun­dance of game here in 1776, quite often attract­ed to the numer­ous salt licks. The pio­neers encoun­tered and named a num­ber of these licks. The brack­ish water of one, called “Big Stamp” on Fourmile Creek, attract­ed native wildlife as well as domes­tic live­stock. These licks were linked togeth­er by wide trails com­pact­ed by herds of bison over the cen­turies and known as “buf­fa­lo traces.” Pioneers hunt­ed the same ani­mals that had attract­ed Native Americans: bison, elk, bear, deer, and turkey.

Clark County, then on the untamed fron­tier, wit­nessed some impor­tant events in 1776. There had been a few pre­vi­ous white vis­i­tors, most notably Daniel Boone dur­ing his “long hunt” in 1769–1771. The set­tle­ment of Boonesborough in April 1775 unleashed a tor­rent of vis­i­tors explor­ing and search­ing for places to lay their land claims.

An ear­ly buf­fa­lo trace led from Boonesborough through Clark County to a major salt spring at Lower Blue Licks. Here, the pio­neers hunt­ed game and boiled spring water to make salt. At the begin­ning of January 1776, two ear­ly Clark set­tlers, James and Robert McMillan, marked this impor­tant trail to make it eas­i­er to follow.

The most thrilling event of the year was the cap­ture and res­cue of the Boone and Callaway daughters. 

On a July Sunday after­noon at Boonesborough, Jemima Boone and Betsy and Fanny Callaway took a canoe out on the Kentucky River. When they drift­ed too close to the east­ern bank, they were tak­en by a par­ty of Shawnee and Cherokee Indians. As they crossed the coun­ty head­ing for Ohio, Daniel Boone led a res­cue par­ty to fol­low their trail. That Tuesday, Boone’s men caught up with the Indians and safe­ly retook the girls.

That August, a vis­i­tor brought out a copy of the Declaration of Independence that was read aloud to the res­i­dents at Boonesborough.

It is hard­ly an exag­ger­a­tion to say that every­one who came to Kentucky that year was search­ing for land. Some were look­ing for a place to set­tle; oth­ers were land spec­u­la­tors hop­ing to prof­it from the west­ern move­ment. Claims were estab­lished by mark­ing cor­ner trees and rais­ing a crop of corn or build­ing a cab­in. Clark County was an attrac­tive loca­tion, being adja­cent to Boonesborough and across the riv­er from land claimed by Richard Henderson’s Transylvania Company.

One of the busiest explor­ers was Billy Bush, who marked off numer­ous claims for him­self and oth­ers that would become the Bush Settlement. Daniel Boone raised corn in 1776 to claim his set­tle­ment in the east­ern sec­tion of Clark County. Many oth­er nota­bles marked their claims here: George Rogers Clark (the name­sake of our coun­ty and high school), Benjamin Harrison (Harrison County’s name­sake), John Crittenden (father of U.S. Senator John J. Crittenden), John Strode and David McGee (estab­lished the first sta­tions in Clark County), Hugh Forbes (one of the founders of Mt. Sterling), Edward Wilson (claimed the future site of Winchester), and many others.

At year’s end, Virginia divid­ed Fincastle County into three coun­ties: Kentucky, Montgomery, and Washington. Clark County would not be estab­lished until 1792.